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Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) has proven to be an effective tool for post-training language models (LMs). However, AI systems are increasingly expressed as modular programs that mix together multiple LM calls with distinct…

We study episodic reinforcement learning (RL) in non-stationary linear kernel Markov decision processes (MDPs). In this setting, both the reward function and the transition kernel are linear with respect to the given feature maps and are…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-24 Han Zhong , Zhongren Chen , Zhuoran Yang , Zhaoran Wang , Csaba Szepesvári

Group-relative policy optimization methods train language models by generating multiple rollouts per prompt and normalizing rewards with a shared mean reward baseline. In resource-constrained settings where the rollout budget is small,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Youngeun Kim

Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is commonly used in Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback to align large language models (LLMs) with downstream tasks. This paper investigates the feasibility of using PPO for direct reinforcement…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-10-23 Alexander G. Padula , Dennis J. N. J. Soemers

In this paper, we tackle the challenging problem of delayed rewards in reinforcement learning (RL). While Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) has emerged as a leading Policy Gradient method, its performance can degrade under delayed rewards.…

While Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) has exhibited promise in utilizing external knowledge, its generation process heavily depends on the quality and accuracy of the retrieved context. Large language models (LLMs) struggle to evaluate…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2025-10-13 Shi-Qi Yan , Quan Liu , Zhen-Hua Ling

Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) has become the dominant method for reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards in large language models, but it suffers from two critical limitations: gradient vanishing and diversity collapse.…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Khiem Le , Phuc Nguyen , Youssef Mroueh , Chi-Heng Lin , Shangqian Gao , Ting Hua , Nitesh V. Chawla

Reinforcement learning (RL) has become a key driver of language model reasoning. Among RL algorithms, Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) is the de facto standard, avoiding the need for a critic by using per-prompt baselines and…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-02 Cheng Ge , Caitlyn Heqi Yin , Hao Liang , Jiawei Zhang

We propose a new perspective on policy optimization: rather than reweighting all samples by their importance ratios, an optimizer should select which samples are trustworthy enough to drive a policy update. Building on this view, we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-17 Ziwu Sun , Zhen Gao , Jiyong Zhang , Jiaheng Li

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in business-critical domains such as finance, education, healthcare, and customer support, where users expect consistent and reliable recommendations. Yet LLMs often exhibit variability…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-04-20 Sonal Prabhune , Balaji Padmanabhan , Kaushik Dutta

Model-based offline reinforcement learning (RL) has made remarkable progress, offering a promising avenue for improving generalization with synthetic model rollouts. Existing works primarily focus on incorporating pessimism for policy…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-12 Yuanzhao Zhai , Yiying Li , Zijian Gao , Xudong Gong , Kele Xu , Dawei Feng , Ding Bo , Huaimin Wang

Decision-making under distribution shift is a central challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), where training and deployment environments differ. We study this problem through the lens of robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), which…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-17 Jingwen Gu , Yiting He , Zhishuai Liu , Pan Xu

Differentiable reinforcement learning (RL) frameworks like DiffRO offer a powerful approach for controllable text-to-speech (TTS), but are vulnerable to reward hacking, particularly for nuanced tasks like emotion control. The policy model…

Sound · Computer Science 2026-02-17 Cong Wang , Changfeng Gao , Yang Xiang , Zhihao Du , Keyu An , Han Zhao , Qian Chen , Xiangang Li , Yingming Gao , Ya Li

Group-based reinforcement learning methods, like Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO), are widely used nowadays to post-train large language models. Despite their empirical success, they exhibit structural mismatches between reward…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-09 Aleksandar Fontana , Marco Simoni , Giulio Rossolini , Andrea Saracino , Paolo Mori

Reinforcement learning is widely used to improve the reasoning ability of large language models, especially when answers can be automatically checked. Standard GRPO-style training updates the model using only the current step, while full…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-05-11 Ismam Nur Swapnil , Aranya Saha , Tanvir Ahmed Khan , Mohammad Ariful Haque , Ser-Nam Lim

Large language models (LLMs) have recently advanced in reasoning when optimized with reinforcement learning (RL) under verifiable rewards. Existing methods primarily rely on outcome-based supervision to strengthen internal LLM reasoning,…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Siyao Song , Cong Ma , Zhihao Cheng , Shiye Lei , Minghao Li , Ying Zeng , Huaixiao Tou , Kai Jia

Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) is among the most widely used deep reinforcement learning algorithms, yet its theoretical foundations remain incomplete. Most importantly, convergence and understanding of fundamental PPO advantages remain…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-04 Leif Doering , Daniel Schmidt , Moritz Melcher , Sebastian Kassing , Benedikt Wille , Tilman Aach , Simon Weissmann

Traditional on-policy Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) frameworks suffer from experience waste and reward homogeneity, which directly hinders learning efficiency on difficult samples during large language models…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Xu Wan , Yansheng Wang , Wenqi Huang , Mingyang Sun

Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) significantly enhances the reasoning performance of Large Language Models (LLMs). However, this success heavily relies on expensive external verifiers or human rules. Such dependency not only leads…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Nonghai Zhang , Weitao Ma , Zhanyu Ma , Jun Xu , Jiuchong Gao , Jinghua Hao , Renqing He , Jingwen Xu

Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) offers a promising framework for optimizing large language models in reasoning tasks. However, existing RLVR algorithms focus on different granularities, and each has complementary…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-01-12 Zijun Min , Bingshuai Liu , Ante Wang , Long Zhang , Anxiang Zeng , Haibo Zhang , Jinsong Su